This application relates generally to the field of cellular-related quality of service. More specifically, the disclosure provided herein relates to improving quality of service of grouped cellular devices.
Cellular-related quality of service (“QoS”) issues are a significant source of frustration for service providers as well as their customers. Common QoS issues include bandwidth limitations, jitter, delay and latency, packet loss, and interference. QoS issues may result in a number of problems for customers, potentially causing customers to change service providers. In one example, a customer may experience a “dropped call,” in which a phone call unexpectedly ends. In another example, a customer may experience a slow data transfer rate that is not suitable for transferring high-bandwidth content, such as video and music. QoS problems may result in unacceptable quality of service, causing customer dissatisfaction ranging from annoyance to anger.
To address QoS concerns, cellular service providers provide a number of QoS mechanisms in order to improve QoS. Conventionally, QoS mechanisms generally operate on individual cellular devices without consideration of other cellular devices and, in particular, surrounding cellular devices. Before cellular devices became more widespread, the conventional operation of QoS mechanisms adequately addressed most QoS issues. However, as cellular devices have become more pervasive, it has become increasingly common for cellular users to simultaneously utilize cellular devices within a close proximity, especially in urban and metropolitan areas. The simultaneous utilization of cellular devices in close proximity can reduce the effectiveness of the conventional operation of QoS mechanisms. For example, by not addressing the QoS impact of surrounding cellular devices, the conventional operation of QoS mechanisms may not account for co-interference between multiple cellular devices.